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THR's awards analyst reassesses the field after another huge weekend for "Gravity" and "Captain Phillips" and the unveiling of "Saving Mr. Banks" in London.

Every week until the 86th Oscars on March 2, The Hollywood Reporter's lead awards analyst, Scott Feinberg, will post an updated "Feinberg Forecast," reflecting his latest take on the standings of the contenders in each of the major categories. For more about Feinberg and how he arrives at his projections, scroll to the bottom of this post. Here, meanwhile, is a list of developments since the last forecast that helped to shape this one…

Warner Bros.' Gravitytopped the box office for a third straight weekend thanks to $31 million in domestic ticket sales (it has now grossed $170.6 million domestically and $284.8 million worldwide), and Sony's Captain Phillips placed second for a second straight weekend with $17.3 million in domestic ticket sales and also performed particularly well overseas (it has now grossed $53.3 million domestically and $62.4 million worldwide). Fox Searchlight's 12 Years a Slave, most pundits' current best picture Oscar front-runner, went into limited release on Friday and took in $960,000 from just 19 locations, giving it a $50,526 per-theater average, far and away the weekend's highest. (It will expand to more than 100 theaters next weekend and then go wide Nov. 1.) Also in their first week in a small number of theaters were three other awards hopefuls: Lionsgate/Roadside's All Is Lost ($16,233 per-theater average), Sony Pictures Classics' Kill Your Darlings ($14,425 per-theater average) and Rada Film Group's American Promise ($9,150 per-theater average). DreamWorks' onetime awards hopeful The Fifth Estate, however, was DOA, grossing only $1.7 million from 1,769 U.S. locations, good for a measly $969 per-theater average -- or 30th place.

Worthwhile reading related to the release of 12 Years a Slave in the New York Times: Nelson George's Oct. 11 discussion about the film with the people who made it and historian Eric Foner plus Manohla Dargis' Oct. 18 review.Also, via New York magazine's Vulture website, an analysis of Brad Pitt's decision to cast himself as the one likable white man in the film that he produced, which Pitt insists was only to help the movie get made, but which writer Jada Yuan finds self-serving. (She quotes a colleague who said, "Brad Pitt giving himself that part was like if [Annapurna Pictures founder] Megan Ellison had cast herself as the SEAL who shot Bin Laden at the end of Zero Dark Thirty.")

The 57th BFI London Film Festival came to a close on Oct. 20 with the world premiere of Disney's Saving Mr. Banks. (Click here to read THR's review.) The film's best actress hopeful Emma Thompson and best supporting actor hopefuls Tom Hanks and Colin Farrell were all on hand. Hanks has been spending a lot of time in London, of late: His other 2013 awards hopeful, Captain Phillips, opened the fest on Oct. 9, and Hanks was feted on Oct. 19 by BAFTA as part of its "A Life in Pictures" series, wherein noted filmmakers participate in a lengthy discussion about their lives and careers.

The Hollywood Film Awards announced the recipients of several more prizes that will be presented at its 17th gala ceremony on Oct. 21: American Hustle costume designer Michael Wilkinson and production designer Judy Beckerwill receivethe Hollywood Costume Design Award and Hollywood Production Design Award, respectively; and the band Coldplay will receive the Hollywood Song Award for its hit song "Atlas" from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire; frontman Chris Martin will accept the award on behalf of the group and perform at the event.

City Drive Entertainment Group's The Square, a documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, won the Toronto International Film Festival's audience award in September and recently played at the New York Film Festival, continues to pick up momentum on the circuit -- a lengthy piece about its evolution in Oct. 17's New York Times certainly didn't help -- and I am now categorizing it as the front-runner in an extremely competitive best documentary feature Oscar race, with RADiUS's 20 Feet From Stardom and Sony Pictures Classics' Tim's Vermeer hot on its heels.

There are now only five serious Oscar hopefuls that have not been officially unveiled: Sony's American Hustle, Sony's The Monuments Men, Universal's Lone Survivor, Relativity Media's Out of the Furnace and Paramount's The Wolf of Wall Street. We are still awaiting an official announcement about Wolf's release date -- all we know right now is that it won't be ready by its initially announced date of Nov. 14, but I am hearing reports that a move to Christmas Day is all but certain.

Scott has been forecasting the Oscars since 2001 and has one of the strongest track records of all awards pundits. His best showings came in 2006 and 2013, when he correctly called 21 out of 24 winners. He was the only pundit to project best picture nominations for The Reader (2008), The Blind Side (2009) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011), among many other surprises.

He factors into his projections personal impressions (based on advance screenings of hundreds of films each year), publicly available information (release dates, genres, talent rosters and teasers/trailers often offer valuable clues), historical considerations (comparing and contrasting how other films with similar pedigrees have resonated), precursor awards (some awards groups have historically correlated with the Academy more than others), and conversations with industry insiders (including fellow members of the press, awards strategists, filmmakers and awards voters).